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63d Congress \ 
1st Session f 



SENATE 



f Document 
I No. 234 



ADDRESS 



OF 



PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 

DELIVERED AT 

SWARTHMORE COLLEGE 

SWARTHMORE, PA. 
OCTOBER 25, 1913 




PRESENTED BY MR. CHILTON 
NOVEMBER 6, 1913. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1913 



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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON AT SWARTHMORE COL- 
LEGE, SWARTHMORE, PA., OCTOBER 25, 1913. 



Your Excellency, Mr. Clothier, Mr. President: That greeting 
sounds very familiar, and I am reminded of an anecdote told of 
that good artist, but better wit, Oliver Herford. On one occasion, 
being seated at his club at lunch, a man whose manners he did not 
very much relish came up to him and slapped him on the back and 
said, " Hello, Ollie, old boy, how are you ? " He looked up at the 
man somewhat coldly, and said, " I don't know your name and I 
don't know your face, but your manners are very familiar." The 
manners exemplified in that cheer are delightfully familiar. 

I find myself unaffectedly embarrassed to-day. I want to say, in 
sincere compliment, that I do not like to attempt an extemporaneous 
address following so finished an orator as the one who has just 
taken his seat. Moreover, I am somewhat confused as to my identity. 
I am told by psychologists that I would not know who I am to-day 
if I did not remember who I was yesterday; but when I recollect 
that yesterday I was a college president, that does not assist me in 
establishing my identity to-day. On the contrary, this very presence, 
the character of this audience, this place with its academic memories, 
all combine to remind me that the greater part of my actiye life 
has been spent in companies like this, and i,t will be difficult for me 
in what follows of this address to keep out of the old ruts of admo- 
nition which I have been accustomed to follow, in the role of college 
president. 

No one can stand in the presence of a gathering like this, on a 
day suggesting the memories whi,ch this day suggests, without ask- 
ing himself what a college is for. There have been times when I 
have suspected that certain undergraduates did not know. I re- 
member that in days of discouragement as a teacher I gratefully 
recalled the sympathy of a friend of mine in the Yale faculty, who 
said that after 20 years of teaching he had come to the conclusion 
that the human mind had infinite resources for resisting the intro- 
duction of knowledge. Yet I have my serious doubts as to whether 
the main object of a college is the introduction of knoAvledge. It 
may be the transmission of knowledge through the human system, 
but not much of it sticks. Its introduction is temporary; it is for 
the discipline of the hour. Most of what a man learns in college he 
assiduously forgets afterwards. Not because he purposes to forget it, 
but because the crowding events of the days that follow seem some- 
how to eliminate it. ^ 

^YhH a man ought never to forget with regard to a college is~ 
that it is a nursery of principle and of honor. I can not help think- 
ing of William Penn as a sort of spiritual knight who went out 



4 ADDEESS or PEESIDENT WILSOISr AT SWAETHMORE COLLEGE, 

upon his adventures to carry the torch that had been put in his 
hands, so that other men might have the path ilhiminated for them 
which led to justice and to liberty. I can not admit that a man 
establishes his right to call himself a college graduate by showing 
me his diploma. The only way he can prove it is by showing that 
his eyes are lifted to some horizon which other men less instructed 
than he have not been privileged to see. Unless he carries freight 
of the spirit he has not been bred where spirits are bred. 

This man Penn, representing the sweet enterprise of the quiet 
and powerful sect that called themselves Friends, proved his right 
to the title by being the friend of mankind. He crossed the ocean, 
not merely to establish estates in America, but to set up a free com- 
monwealth in America and to show that he was of the lineage of 
those who had been bred in the best traditions of the human spirit. 
I would not be interested in celebrating the memory of William Penn 
if his conquest had been merely a material one. Sometimes we have 
been laughed at — by foreigners in particular — for boasting of the 
size of the American Continent, the size of our own domain as a 
nation; for they have, naturally enough, suggested that we did not 
make it. But I claim that ever}^ race and every man is as big as 
the thing that he takes possession of, and that the size of America is 
in some sense a standard of the size and capacity of the American 
people. And yet the mere extent of the American conquest is not 
what gives America distinction in the annals of the world, but the 
professed purpose of the conquest which was to see to it that every 
foot of this land should be the home of free, self-governed people, 
who should have no government whatever which did not rest upon 
the consent of the governed, I would like to believe that all this 
hemisphere is devoted to the same sacred purpose and that nowhere 
can any government endure which is stained by blood or supported 
by anything but the consent of the governed. 

The spirit of Penn will not be stayed. You can not set limits to 
such knightly adventurers. After their own day is gone their 
spirits stalk the world, carrying inspiration everywhere that they 
go and reminding men of the lineage, the fine lineage, of those who 
have sought justice and right. It is no small matter, therefore, for 
a college to have as its patron saint a man who went out upon such 
a conquest. What I would like to ask you young people to-day is: 
How manj^ of you have devoted yourselves to the like adventure? 
How many of you will volunteer to carry these spiritual messages of 
liberty to the world? How many of you will forego anything ex- 
cept your allegiance to that which is just and that which is right? 
We die but once, and we die without distinction if we are not willing 
to die the death of sacrifice. Do you covet honor? You will never 
get it by serving yourself. Do you covet distinction? You will 
get it only as the servant of mankind. Do not forget, then, as you 
walk these classic places, why you are here. You are not here merely 
to prepare to make a living. You are here in order to enable the 
world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of 
hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you 
impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. 

It seems to me that there is no great difference between the ideals 
of the college and the ideals of the State. Can you not translate 



ADDRESS OF PEESIDENT WILSON AT SWAKTHMORE COLLEGE. 

the one into the other ? Men have not had to come to college, let me 
remind you, to quaff the fountains of this inspiration. You are 
merely more privileged than they. Men out of every walk of life, 
men without advantages of any kind, have seen the vision, and you, 
with it written large upon every page of your studies, are the more 
blind if you do not see it when it is pointed out. You could not be 
forgiven for overlooking it. They might have been. But they did 
not await instruction. They simply drew the breath of life into 
their lungs, felt the aspirations that must come to every human soul, 
looked out upon their brothers, and felt their pulses beat as their 
fellows' beat, and then sought by counsel and action to move forward 
to common ends that would be crowned with honor and achievement. 
This is the only glory of America. Let every generation of Swarth- 
more men and women add to the strength of that lineage and the 
glory of that crown of life ! 

o 






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